Quantum Tunneling (energy transfer)

According to team leader, Professor Jeremy Baumberg, "the trick to telling electrons how to pass through walls, is to now marry them with light."

This marriage is fated because the light is in the form of cavity photons, packets of light trapped to bounce back and forth between mirrors which sandwich the electrons oscillating through their wall.

Research scientist Peter Cristofolini added: "The offspring of this marriage are actually new indivisible particles, made of both light and matter, which disappear through the slab-like walls of semiconductor at will."

One of the features of these new particles, which the team christened 'dipolaritons', is that they are stretched out in a specific direction rather like a bar magnet. And just like magnets, they feel extremely strong forces between each other.

Such strongly interacting particles are behind a whole slew of recent interest from semiconductor physicists who are trying to make condensates, the equivalent of superconductors and superfluids that travel without loss, in semiconductors.

Being in two places at once, these new electronic particles hold the promise of transferring ideas from atomic physics into practical devices, using quantum mechanics visible to the eye

Look into Casimir regarding the 'mirrors' (plates).

Then note the potential is identified at different locations as the property known of light, as 'entanglement'

Quantum Magnetism Simulated In Europe...Quantum magnetism simulated using ultracold fermionsMay 24, 2013 > Quantum magnetism has been mimicked  or simulated  using ultracold fermionic atoms for the first time. Researchers in Switzerland and France placed atoms on a 2D square lattice created by criss-crossing laser beams. By controlling the interactions between atoms, the team put pairs of atoms into antiferromagnetic configurations. While quantum magnetism plays an important role in a range of solid-state phenomena, it can be difficult to calculate its effect on materials such as high-temperature superconductors. As a result, quantum simulations should lead to better theoretical models of a range of solids.

Quantum magnetism involves a subtle effect called the exchange interaction. This is a quantum interaction between pairs of identical fermions  such as electrons  that tends to prevent neighbouring fermions from having their spin magnetic moments pointing in the same direction. As well as being responsible for the magnetic properties of everyday materials such as iron, quantum magnetism is also believed to play an important role in high-temperature superconductivity and other exotic states of matter such as spin liquids.

Criss-crossing laser beams

Quantum simulations using ultracold atoms allow physicists to create artificial materials in which the atoms play the role of electrons in a solid. However, unlike real materials, where it can be difficult to vary the interactions between electrons, the forces between atoms in a quantum simulator can be fine-tuned by adjusting lasers and magnetic field.

These latest simulations were done by Tilman Esslinger and colleagues at ETH Zόrich and the University of Bordeaux. The team began with an ultracold cloud of potassium-40 atoms, which are fermions. The cloud is a mixture in which half of the atoms are in the 9/2 spin state and the other half in the 7/2 state. This two-state system simulates 1/2 and 1/2 spin states of the electron. The criss-crossing laser beams are then switched on, creating a 2D square lattice wherein each lattice site contains one potassium-40 atom. The exchange interaction is then simulated by applying a magnetic field to the lattice, which makes atoms with the same spin repel each other.

The next experimental step involves solving a thermodynamics problem. Even at the extremely low lattice temperatures there is too much entropy  or disorder  for quantum magnetism to emerge. To get round this problem, Esslinger and colleagues came up with a way of "stashing" entropy at the edges of the lattice so that quantum magnetism could emerge in the centre.

This is done by tweaking the properties of the optical lattice so that the interactions between nearest-neighbour atoms alternate between strong and weak in the x and y directions. An atom with a strong interaction with a nearest neighbour will form a pair (or dimer) in which the spins point in opposite directions  and the lattice of 5000 atoms becomes a collection of antiferromagnetic dimers.

The causes of the Casimir effect are described by quantum field theory, which states that all of the various fundamental fields, such as the electromagnetic field, must be quantized at each and every point in space. In a simplified view, a "field" in physics may be envisioned as if space were filled with interconnected vibrating balls and springs, and the strength of the field can be visualized as the displacement of a ball from its rest position. Vibrations in this field propagate and are governed by the appropriate wave equation for the particular field in question. The second quantization of quantum field theory requires that each such ball-spring combination be quantized, that is, that the strength of the field be quantized at each point in space. At the most basic level, the field at each point in space is a simple harmonic oscillator, and its quantization places a quantum harmonic oscillator at each point. Excitations of the field correspond to the elementary particles of particle physics. However, even the vacuum has a vastly complex structure, so all calculations of quantum field theory must be made in relation to this model of the vacuum.

The vacuum has, implicitly, all of the properties that a particle may have: spin, or polarization in the case of light, energy, and so on. On average, most of these properties cancel out: the vacuum is, after all, "empty" in this sense. One important exception is the vacuum energy or the vacuum expectation value of the energy. The quantization of a simple harmonic oscillator states that the lowest possible energy or zero-point energy that such an oscillator may have is E=hbarw

what makes casimir so cool is that is shows a zero point energy but that's impossibble because it breaks every board of walking the planck